10 YRS AGO – WWE Live Event Results (1/3/2014): Cody & Goldust defend against The Real Americans, plus Cena, Orton, Brodus Clay, Ziggler, Alberto, Rusev, Ryback, Khali, more

The following report originally published 10 years ago this week here at PWTorch.com…

WWE Live house show results
January 3, 2014
Fayetteville, N.C.
Report by Jarred Hufford & Stephen Maxwell, PWTorch readers

Note from Jarred: Earlier in the day, Goldust and Cody Rhodes did an autograph signing on Fort Bragg. They had an estimated turn-out of 800 people. Very nice guys, and Goldust was even a good sport when giving him a hard time about his Dallas Cowboys losing. Cody laughed at him and teased him as well.

Note from Stephen: The arena was about two-thirds full of fairly enthusiastic fans. I liked the new (to me) house show set, which included a lighted stage with ramp, a mini-tron sandwiched between two smaller video screens, and smoke machines. The house show presentations continue to improve.

(1) Sin Cara beat Ryback with a roll-up reversing the Shell Shock for a surprise pin. Good opening match. The new Sin Cara is so much more fluid in the ring. Ryback actually got a lot of cheers with a few Goldberg chants mixed in, but he heeled it up to get booed.

(2) Alexander Rusev beat Zack Ryder via submission with the Camel Clutch after reversing the Rough Ryder. Slow match, Ryder got some good cheers and Rusev got a lot of boos by doing an opening promo in Russian, riling riled up the crowd with his best Nikita Koloff “crush the competition” promo. The crowd got behind Ryder in his comebacks, but submitted to the Clutch.

(3) Bella Twins beat Alicia Fox & Aksana in a Fans’s Choice match of dance-off or a match. Alicia and Aksana danced horribly, then attacked the Bellas as they danced and did the worm. They tried to leave and then the Bellas called them back for a fight. They chased them down and threw them back into the ring. Brie Bella did most of the work before scoring the pin.

(4) Tensai beat Brodus Clay. Clay attacked Tensai on his way to the ring. Brodus beat him up a lot and then trashed-talked him and the fans before Tensai got up and asked the ref to start the match. Tensai won with a quick roll-up about two minutes into things. Brodus got a chair and went to attack, but Tensai kicked it into his face. Nothing special about a match meant to establish Clay’s heel character.

(5) Dolph Ziggler beat Alberto Del Rio. Amazing, outstanding, physical back-and-forth match that really played to the crowd. Both wrestlers had the crowd involved from throwing their shirts to every nearfall. Ziggler won with Zig-Zag after reversing the Cross Armbreaker. Ziggler had a huge reaction and he really should be higher on the card. The crowd loved him.

[ Intermission. Ring announcer Justin Roberts pushed autographs from John Cena and Randy Orton. ]

(6) Great Khali beat Curtis Axel with the giant chop. Dud of a match. Khali can barely walk; it’s sad to see live. Kids still like him, though. Axel got no heat at all and sold like crazy for Khali in a comedy match.

(7) WWE Tag Champions Cody Rhodes & Goldust beat The Real Americans (without Zeb Colter) after the Cross Rhodes on Swagger. Fantastic tag match with lots of nearfalls and the hot tag to Cody after Goldust was in trouble for most of the match. Cody really gets the crowd behind him and he hit a perfect moonsault to huge cheers from the crowd. The match lived up to the standards of quality in many of WWE’s TV tag matches as of late.

(8) John Cena beat WWE World Hvt. champion Randy Orton via DQ. Orton hit Cena with a low blow to cause the DQ. Typical Cena and Orton match with the usual spots. Cena hit the AA after the match to send the crowd home happy. Very pro-Cena crowd with tons of kids in the audience. Both received tremendous responses, but Cena’s was incredible. There’s a reason he’s still at the top

Also of note, there were a lot of C.M. Punk and Daniel Bryan t-shirts in the crowd, plus all the Cena fans. Good show with no return date announced.

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